


Penultimate (or, "All the things to be said, or left unsaid")

by ladyoftheskulls



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-19 00:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2368436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoftheskulls/pseuds/ladyoftheskulls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janine: "I wish you weren't... whatever it is you are."<br/>Sherlock: "I know."<br/>[S3E2: The Sign of Three]</p><p>Ambiguity is crucial to subtext.  Will we ever see a resolution to the Johnlock conundrum?  I don't know, but here's what I imagine...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penultimate (or, "All the things to be said, or left unsaid")

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about whether BBC!Johnlock will ever become canon, and about subtext becoming text, and the power (as well as the danger) of leaving some things unsaid; the power of ambiguity, of being "whatever it is" -- whatever it is we hope, or imagine, or make of it -- and this somehow happened. 
> 
> (With cursory, though not very serious, apologies to Marlowe and Eliot. Super-duper extra bonus points to anyone who speculates, based on this, what may have happened to Mary in the meantime. I didn't intend it to, but somehow the quotes did it...)
> 
> Also available on my Tumblr at http://f0xeg1rl.tumblr.com/post/98580150226/all-the-things-to-be-said-or-left-unsaid
> 
> ETA: If you read this and like it, I would be ever so pleased if you left a comment -- it is my first foray into actual fic and I would love to hear your responses and feedback!

The scene: 221B, soft firelight. John and Sherlock are sitting, relaxed, in their chairs, completely at ease. An outside observer might be reminded of a certain stag night some years earlier — laced with anticipation, spiked with tension, heavy with meanings unspoken and things unsaid, just before everything went completely… Well. That doesn’t need to be said either; too many painful memories. But tonight is no longer that night. Tonight, a comfortable silence reigns. 

Their chairs are companionably close, as they were on that night so long ago and yet so near in memory. John, as he was then, is cradling a glass of Scotch in one hand, but tonight — unlike that night — he’s not ridiculously, hopelessly, last-ditch-inhibition-conqueringly drunk; tonight, he doesn’t need to be; tonight, he’s just… soft, a little blurred around the edges, but here, right where he needs to be, right where he knows he belongs. 

Sherlock — quite unlike he was that night (exposed, vulnerable, all defenses down, never planned or expected to be that way, couldn’t deduce what to do when he was, and then they were so rudely interrupted, by that client whose case turned out to be crucial… but that was long ago, and in another country, metaphorically at least) — is apparently oblivious to the symmetry of the situation; he is reading, or appears to be reading, an old monograph on bee-keeping, and if his eyes sometimes lose their focus on the page, it is surely not because he is intimately aware of John sitting opposite him, watching him. Because John has no such inhibitions: he is gazing unashamedly at Sherlock across the short space between them, drinking Sherlock in with his eyes, affection written all over his expressive face. He smiles to himself — open, unguarded — and his eyebrows draw upwards slightly as a thought crosses his mind. He takes a sip of his drink and then leans forward, left hand resting gently on Sherlock’s knee.

"I’m glad we are…" he says — eyes wide, trusting, tender.

Sherlock looks up, meeting John’s eyes over the top of the monograph he has been pretending to read, all this time.

"… whatever it is we are." John gestures vaguely with the glass in his right hand, giving Sherlock’s knee a gentle squeeze with his left, his smile broadening into that familiar grin that Sherlock knows so well.

Sherlock holds John’s gaze with his own — holds it in a moment that contains everything that they have and haven’t said to each other over the years; before, during and since that other night. His right hand comes down, unobtrusively, to rest next-to-and-ever-so-slightly-overlapping John’s hand on his knee. The corner of his mouth quirks and his eyes crinkle, in one of those small, private smiles that’s just for them.

"I know," he says.


End file.
